


lord, what about him?

by futile_devices



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: ALMOST Character Death, AND GAY, Alternate Ending, Blood I guess, Dismemberment, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, actually they speak but they dont like actually do anything, altina ment, anyway this is what they should have had i dont make the rules, gawain ment, hi im sad, im sorry i have no idea how to do this, micaiah ment, sanaki ment, sephiran and zelgius survive sorry, very very indiscreet biblical references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 09:57:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16679431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futile_devices/pseuds/futile_devices
Summary: "You wish she could know, don't you""Of course, but we must never."[alternate ending to radiant dawn]





	lord, what about him?

_‘Thank you… My Lady Sanaki… I’ll... be leaving you now. Zel...gius… is waiting. … Al… ti… na…’_

Let this be the end and nothing more. His last desire of the mortal plane, and for once granted. Darkness and a shriek from his daughter, but this is all his life had been worth. Lehran has lived far too long, even if he truly did die 800 years ago, even if death had been so close an acquaintance, stories told on what he never says. ‘Finally’ he must think as Ragnell finds him true, and if he is to finally die, a millennia too late, then Lehran is glad it is through her hand and no one else’s. In the end, had it not always been for her, all that Lehran can grasp and all that remains out of his reach, memories of a time forgotten and a memories of a time unlived.

And it comes, so simply. Peace and nothingness. A silence incomparable, so needed. Lehran drowns in it, like once the waves and seas, but this time, he resolves, this time he shall not wake up, watered lungs and choking on the shoreline. No, this is the end, and nothing more.

It comes, at last.

Darkness for moments, but it is enough for him; an immortal now dead, and what is there for him beyond life? Lehran hopes it nothing as well, for 800 years of strife and sorrow and heartache and hatred could be repaid in 800 of silence and nothing else. He has wished for the destruction of the world and so the world shall destroy him, leave nothing but his corpse and the tears of his daughter, the only breathing thing that he still loves. But dawn awakens, however faintly. More delicate than the previous years, though perhaps it is because in those he had never died, but his heartbeat is still quiet, and perhaps out of a stubbornness, he refuses to breath. Lehran would have nothing else than the death that was finally promised to him. Twilight still embraces him, though with looser arms, and he thinks he simply needs more time, and that is fine. Whatever pace is of little import, so long as the result is what he desires. He cannot live, no, when all he has loved is dead.

Altina is waiting. Zelgius is waiting.

‘ _Don’t die, you can’t die_ ’ Spoken through sorrow and unshed tears, a melody of the past as well in the Maiden’s voice, but for moments in the confusion of death, he thinks it his wife’s. So it has come then, but he dares not open his eyes, not yet, lest the time be too soon and he is graced by the truly breathing.

The next voice is weak, simply weak, trembling with each word, and Lehran thinks to rise, wipe her tears and tell her, oh his sun and his moon, that he has not left her, that he never would (for he has left too many and too much, and it is a tragic business, one he might resolve to end today) but Lehran does not. ‘ _Tell me he is breathing… Micaiah?’_

A step taken, and a whisper, _‘I am sorry.’_

Even as the steps scatter and the echo of an opening door resounds through the empty hall, earthly discomforts still plague him- the hardness of the floor, the slickness of blood on his skin, the begging of his lungs. He is alive. Lehran must accept that; death did claim him but by the graces of dawn he is raised once more. What of his heart refuses to rest? Surely it is not the life he has led since; no, even the most hardened of warriors would desire for the earth just as he had.

But perhaps when he rises, he is born anew. If Lehran is to believe in idealistic thoughts (as he did once, lifetimes ago) then resurrection may not only be in the body but of the spirit. If wings are to spread, catch air in the manner of times past, would they be of their true eternal nature and not of the punishment of union? It is only Sephiran that dies, but Lehran that is raised from the dead. And air finds him, fills him, and eyes flutter open (it is thankful thing that the light is not bright) to receive the world perhaps as a newborn does, but even still his wonder and awe must be shadowed by a leaded disappointment. Life returns, dawn awakens. Facts of life he has never been allowed to reject; this is no different. Is he to wail now, sob for the wishes that have never been granted?

Punishment, he finds, not life.

Somehow within himself he finds the strength to stand, and true blood still stains robes of pure white, the Maiden’s power is nothing but genuine. He had hoped there would no longer be need for his feet, his legs, mortal body; what a horrid thing for a bird to not take flight, for a dead man to still walk. Breathing more than walking is the greater challenge, to find in himself the motivation to draw air into his lungs, for it is true, is it not? There is nothing for him to live for. His Goddess should be halted, and his knight slain. Those who still live paint him only in the colors he wishes himself to be.

Still, Lehran descends down endless steps, staff a walking stick and Creiddylad clutched tightly at his chest, as if to hide the wound from whichever specters roam these endless halls. For whatever purpose he wanders, Lehran does not know, and there is thought, however morbid, to attempt flight once more, take that step and see if his wings extend in all their hidden glory. If they do or if they don’t, he receives what he has wanted all along. What flight is worth, however, remains unknown. But regardless, he does not, finding himself a coward in this moment, or perhaps penitent, seeing in his thoughts ideas that years of life had made him blind to, but now? He is only moments old and he would wait for moments more, at least until the tower rends its final judgement or becomes mute. Then he should see, test the skies and perhaps paint the sky with forgotten melodies.

Grief, Lehran realizes, is what drives him in his newfound infancy, two floors lower and a hollow room. If he strains his mind he could perhaps hear the remnants of battle cries and screeches, the fizzing of magic in a faint memory, not too distant, and the lingering of a wall of light, dividing. But that is no matter, no, not when heartache meets a corpse and he runs, tome clattering to the ground and innocent tears alongside it.

* * *

True, perhaps, that Zelgius should have died, imprisoned in his own armor and pierced by Ragnell (he does not know, for how could he, that soon after it would sheath itself in his beloved lord). A fitting end, even should it be through lying teeth and false eyes; if his life had been drowned in lies and so very little truth, then it is only fair that Zelgius should die for a lie as well. Foolish to even begin to think that the son could reach his father whose strength could is the culmination of the entire continent and then more. Still, it is a right wronged, even if a more primal one, and that he cannot deny.

But he does not die, even as exhaustion lures him, even as his eyes shut and his body begs for it.

_‘...phiran… I will wait for you in the afterlife’_

Even as Alondite leaves his hand to meet its twin, united in Altina in the form of Ike, he does not die. He should, Zelgius knows this; that they will continue on and reach his lord, and he knows, in the depths of his horrid heart, what awaits them both, and what awaits him now in the realm of living? When moments pass and the clock strikes, he will be alone. Zelgius is a weak man concerning the heart, and should he think of loneliness once more, a fate he once resigned to, that is worse than death (though that is a weightless statement, when it is that very same release he desires for. at least in death he would be beside another, the only other who ever mattered). So he waits covered in his own blood, embracing rather ignoring than the pain that shoots through him (his right arm lays a few steps from his body, severed from Ragnell. He cannot bear to bring his eyes to it; its phantom is enough and the steady dripping of blood more than it) for death to claim him.

It is an eternity, he might imagine, and slowly it comes, as the weight is lifted from him and mind finds some peace in picturing futures that would never come to pass- until there are desperate steps that echo in the empty room; they are light, as if fluttering gently upon the stone floors, but in each pace forward they grow heavier and heavier. Zelgius did not imagine Ike to be a man to return to kill a defenseless man, but even so, his eyes remain shut, and perhaps it is only some hallucination, playing of the mind before he should go.

No words take flight upon the still air, but there is a gentle touch, though he can feel stained with blood certainly, at his cheek and heavy breaths. _‘Zelgius?’_ Through broken lungs the name rises, falls only upon him and nothing else, and oh he is a hopeless man but if a single word could resurrect him, call him a living man once more.

(Then, is this death, that he meets his lord so soon after?)

‘ _My_ ’ a cough over takes him, and his eyes receive the world, and for all the blood and pain still on his countenance, and it may be the lure of death and loss of blood, but Zelgius finds his lord in the same sight as the moment they first met. _‘My lord?’_ There are no other words he could speak, whether for the state of his heart or for the state of his dying body, but there are no other words needed. The touch disappears, and Zelgius finds himself instantly in a loss, but one so simple that the ache grips him, but his lord’s hands join for a greater purpose, and soon the armor caked in blood is removed from him, ever so delicately. _‘Stay still.’_ And Zelgius obeys (even should their purpose for union is null; it had never been only about destruction. and Zelgius loves him, truly, with whatever breath is left for him to give, and it is too tragic of a thought to turn his head and refuse).

A warmth, though this time of an otherworldly nature; the touch of angels if he could give it a descriptor, but one so familiar that Zelgius has memorized it alongside the wounds of Nados. One grows from the ghost of his arm, wishing he were blind to how his skin mends itself, how the veins and arteries twist around each other and the bone smooths itself, but he cannot complain of course. The staff is then placed to the wound at his chest, but it is held with one hand, while the other returns to its previous home and the only sound that passes between them is breathing and faint muttering in a language Zelgius cannot understand. Whatever time passes as well is unknown to him, and he hopes that the Goddess is as powerful as she heralded, not for her own good, but rather so that this moment might last and that they might-

Might what?

_‘Can you stand?’_

His lord rises first, then grasps his hand, and helps him up. It is so simple to speak words of salvation and saviors, the glory that comes and the will to serve, but time and time again, Zelgius finds himself saved by the simple grace of Seph- no, Lehran. Whether he is worthy of it has never mattered. A merciful god, then, who gazes even upon the most guilty sinner and saves him, loves him, raises him from mortal pain. Without conditions or regards or even the simple thought, and in that wake, Zelgius is penitent, treads carefully in each step that the two make together, towards the grand doorway.

Only silence once again, and blame that either on its lack of worth or the exhaustion that consumes both so wholly that their only goal is to leave this tower without any glances back.

But even still, when they are near exiting the first floor, Lehran cuts through the quiet. _‘You are wondering why I call you, even now?’_

 _‘Yes, my lord.’_ Simply, quietly.

_‘If I wish for you to remain with me until I leave, would you object?’_

_‘You know all things. You know I would not.’_

-

They are beyond Begnion’s borders as stone fades into flesh (having taken advantage of the helpless state of the world in gaining all that is necessary for the forward movement) beside each other in the seat, reins loosely held in Zelgius’s hand, and he knows that he does not need to speak, that their physical wounds beg to be healed and soon the sun will dip below the horizon and they can let their sorrow rise between them in all their forgotten honesty, but somehow he finds it in himself to speak. _‘You wish she could know, don’t you?’_

And Lehran turns to him and his voice is far too quiet, but Zelgius can hear it even above the turning of the wheels upon the ground. _‘Of course, but we must never.’_

They do not speak of the tragedy of that and all the other little things, but when sunset comes upon them and the tent is pitched and the fire is lit, they only lean against each other with silent tears.

And that is enough.


End file.
